Show VIGILANCE COMMITTEE threatened IT will be observed by the follow following lag from the san fraucisco francisco Gh chronicle ronicle that that city is in danger of witnessing similar scenes to those that were so notoriously common on the coast in the early times of its settlement within the past week there have been no less than six deaths by violence in this city all of which may be denominated murder in the popular sense of the term if no in a strictly strictly strict lK legal sense some were murder wit with premeditation and malice end and some were killing in anger or under some provocation real or fancied but there theire is for the purposes ol of this article no need of drawing fine spun distinctions what we earnestly desire to call attention to is in this that there I 1 is a growing tendency in this city to belive believe that the machinery of the law either is not adequate to the prevention or due punishment of cri crime me or that its operations are abused so as to lo result in defeating the ends of justice the people of san francisco a are re losing faith in the efficacy of courts and juries and prosecuting officers and are coming to believe that if one accused of crime can but secure a certain amount of delay he is practically secure from pun ish ashment ment this thia belief has nothing to do with the grand jury questions which have been so prominently r eminently before the public of late it no Is n not ot dela delay 1 in investigating charges or finding inyl indictments ot ments which is undermining the confidence of the people but delay in bringing men to trial who are charged with crime and additional delay in carry carrying ing in into to execution the sentence if a verdict of guilty is rendered the sequence of this loss of confidence is not hard to forsee distrust in legal methods met hols and processes will be certain to beget an undue admiration for methods which are clearly illegal but which under analogous conditions have certainly proved effective in plain words this city is in beginning to think vigilance verv seriously and if this epidemic of murder be not checked it will not be possible to answer for the consequences |